Friday night we went to the Almería vs. Villarreal B game! The game was pretty uneventful as it ended in a 0-0 tie :(

The evening wasn't without excitement though! Right as the second half of the game was about to start, there was an apagón, or power outage! At left you can see the stadium with only the light of people's cell phones.

After about 5 minutes, the emergency lights came on. Another 5 minutes later, the big lights came back on and after a 15 minute or so delay, the second half started.

About 10 minutes into the second half, the lights in one corner of the stadium went out again but the ref let the game continue as there was still plenty of light to be able to play. Pretty funny.

After the game, LB and I went back to the house, ate dinner at like 11:30pm (haha), and crashed because we were getting up early to go hike in Cabo de Gata the next morning!

When I got back from work on Friday, LB and I decided to go out to lunch instead of cooking at the house. Since it was a gorgeous day, albeit RIDICULOUSLY windy (I saw the biggest waves I've ever seen in Almería that day), we headed up to the boardwalk, Paseo maritimo, to dine and enjoy the fabulous Mediterranean sun.

We decided on a restaurant called La Cabaña de Tío Tom, which in English is Uncle Tom's Cabin haha. This place is known for being cheap and having really big tapas, naturally a logical choice for two fat kids!

At Tío Tom we sipped on tinto de verano, a mix of red wine and soda water, and ate various tapas--several mini sandwiches of pork loin with different sauces and toppings, chicken wings, french fries, and of course we ordered all the typical stuff--serrano ham, manchego cheese, fried almonds, and tortilla española which is like a potato and egg omelette.

Afterwards, we headed downtown for my class at the academy before we went back to my house to shower and get ready for our next evening activity...

The above panoramic (click on it to see the full size version) gives you a really good idea of what the Alcazaba was like back in the day. It was not merely a place from which to protect the city...it WAS the city. The left part of the photo is the "castley" part. There, you can see the typical notched walls, towers, gardens, fountains, etc. As you look further to the right, you see a long wall which passes down into a valley and then back up onto the top of the next hill. That valley was the location of the original Almería, and the wall enclosed it.

The Alcazaba was constructed in three phases which are clearly distinguished as you walk around. The oldest part was constructed in the 10th century by the Arabs. It was essentially the basics--houses, aljibes, or water collection rooms, and places from which the military could defend the city.

The second part was also constructed by the Arabs, not too long after the first part, and included the addition of political headquarters, shops, etc.

The third part is noticeably different. Once Spain was reconquered by the Catholics in the late 1400's, a third and final stage was completed. This part of the fortress, constructed in true Catholic style, is crowned by a large tower topped with a cross and cross shaped windows carved in nearly all the walls. The Arabic features remain in the old parts, but the Catholics made sure that their presence was known in the construction of the newest part.

From one of the highest points of the Alcazaba, I was able to get another great panoramic view of the city and port of Almería that sit below. Once again, click on the picture to see the full size version...it's far more impressive that way.

BEAUTIFUL

Cerezos aka cherry blossoms in bloom at the Alcazaba with rainclouds in the distance. It never rained, of course.

LB got to Almería 2 weeks ago on Wednesday, April 11th to spend the weekend here and to head back to the states on Monday the 16th. I had to work Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday both in the morning and the afternoon, so our activity those 3 days was a bit limited, but we managed to do some cool stuff.

On Wednesday when LB got here all we ventured out to do was go to the grocery store. The rest of the day she just hung out at the house and got settled while I was working.

Thursday, however, we were able to see a bit of Almería. After I got back from school, we had lunch and then took off to visit the Alcazaba, the second biggest castle/fort in all of Spain built back in the 10th century by the Arabs who, at the time, occupied southern Spain. We tried to visit the Alcazaba last year when Audra was here but it was closed, so we were glad to get to go in this year. I've been here a year and a half and had never entered, so I was especially excited.

The weather was a little on the cloudy side when we first got there but it cleared up by the time we left. I took the above picture right as the sun came out.

So this post is special...SUPER DUPER delayed...as in I wrote it a year ago and never got around to posting it haha. I figured since since it's Semana Santa again, it's fitting to post it now. Better late than never, right?

I just wanted to give y'all a look into what the Easter celebration is like here in Spain. Instead of celebrating only Easter Sunday, the celebration, called Semana Santa or "Holy Week," starts on Palm Sunday (Domingo de ramas), the Sunday before Easter, and continues for the duration of the week. It's the Spanish spring break, so to speak, as there is no school and from Thursday to Easter Sunday, no one has to work. However, considering what this week represents, it bears absolutely no resemblance to a typical American spring break. 

Like I said before, Semana Santa begins on domingo de ramas (Palm Sunday) and continues through lunes santo, martes santo, miércoles santo, jueves santo (that's Holy Monday, Holy Tuesday, etc), viernes de dolores (Good Friday), sábado santo (Holy Saturday), and domingo de la resurrección (Easter Sunday). Rather than explaining what exactly Semana Santa is in my own words, I'll let Wikipedia do the work for me. According to Wikipedia...

"Sevilla, Málaga, Zamora, and León hold elaborate processions for Holy Week. A tradition that dates from medieval times which has spread to other cities in Andalucía, the Semana Santa in Sevilla is notable for featuring the procession of 'pasos', lifelike wood or plaster sculptures of individual scenes of the events that happened between Jesus' arrest and his burial, or images of the Virgin Mary showing grief for the torture and killing of her son. In Málaga the lifelike wooden or plaster sculptures are called 'tronos' and they are carried through the streets by penitentes, or penitents, dressed in long purple robes, often with pointed hats, followed by women in black carrying candles (mantillas) for up to 11 hours. These pasos and tronos are physically carried on the necks of costaleros (literally 'sack men', because of the costal, a sack-like cloth that they wear over their neck, to soften the burden)...and can weigh up to five metric tons. The pasos are set up and maintained by hermandades and cofradías, religious brotherhoods that are common to a specific area of the city, whose precede the paso dressed in Roman military costumes or penitential robes. Those members who wish to do so wear these penitential robes with conical hats, or capirotes, used to conceal the face of the wearer (these robes intentionally served as the basis for the traditional uniform for members of the  Ku Klux Klan in the United States). [They] carry processional candles, may walk the city streets barefoot, and may carry shackles and chains in their feet as penance. A brass band, marching band, a drum and bugle band, or in Malaga's case a military band (such as that of the Spanish Legion or other military units) may accompany the group, playing funeral marches, religious hymns or 'marchas' written for the occasion."

I went to the processions here in Almería on Monday and Tuesday. We tried to go on Thursday and Sunday as well but they ended up getting rained out. Monday was my first glimpse at Semana Santa. I was excited to go because our friend Alberto was going to be a costalero, which as explained above is one of the people who carries the paso, or giant float-like object. I arrived downtown at 8pm and we saw one of the other processions before moving on to grab some dinner and then catch Alberto's procession as it passed through La Rambla, one of the main streets in downtown Almería.

At my first procession, I knew nothing about what was going on, so I was getting explanations left and right as people passed by me. The first thing I asked about was who the KKK guys were haha. Lulu explained to me that they were called penitentes. Essentially, they are people who want to repent for their sins and they basically make a deal with God that they're going to walk in a Semana Santa procession to repent and in exchange their sins will be forgiven. Depending upon the procession of which the penitente is a part, they will carry a candle, a cross, a lantern, or various other objects. From the moment they put on their cloak and hood to the moment that the procession is over, they are not allowed to talk. Some take this more seriously than others because I definitely saw some talking amongst each other as well as with people in the crowds. Speaking of taking this seriously, some penitentes also choose to take it one step further by going shoe-less or even wearing chains around their ankles. That, however, is completely up to the discretion of the penitente. Note the penitente at left...no shoes.


As mentioned in the Wikipedia article, the processions are organized and pasos are maintained by hermandades (literally "brotherhoods") and cofradías which are basically groups of people that go to the same Catholic church. I was surprised to find out that the penitentes, mantillas, and costaleros don't have to be members of the hermandad, cofradia, or church which organizes the procession in order to participate. In fact, you don't have to be Catholic or even religious. I found that somewhat strange.

One of the Virgins from Lunes Santo

Note the elaborate embroidery underneath the canopy

The costalero was hungry, so we stopped at McDonald's haha

Alberto in full costalero attire

More penitentes--la procesión de la pasión

El Cristo de la pasión

Pardon the descriptions of these videos because I'm writing them a year later and I don't remember details. 

The first video is of La Virgen del Amor (the Virgin of love) and was filmed in la Puerta Purchena in the heart of downtown Almería, on Martes Santo (4/19/2011). At first the paso is stopped and when the man knocks on it, the costaleros raise it up and everyone claps.Then the procession proceeds up the street. There are probably like 40+ men underneath the paso carrying it.

The second video is of el Cristo del perdón (the Christ of Forgiveness) and was also filmed on Martes Santo (4/19/2011). You'll notice that this video is radically different from the first. First, this paso is a "Cristo" rather than a "Virgin." Second, the costaleros, dressed all in black, carry this one from the outside via thick wooden beams that protrude from both sides rather than from underneath. Third, there is no music. This procession is carried out in silence with the beating of drums and ringing of bells being the only sound. Additionally, the penitentes don't wear the conical hats but instead regular black hoods and none of them are allowed to wear shoes.

 

The third video is also of el Cristo del perdón (the Christ of Forgiveness) but this one shows the encierro, which is the last part of the procession when the costaleros put the paso back inside the church. In this video you'll see several things. First, you can see the costaleros change positions when they stop for the first time. Second, you'll see some guys swinging around some little black things with smoke coming out...it's burning incense, the signature smell of Semana Santa. Third, notice that no one applauds when the paso is raised. And finally, watch how slowly and methodically they move and how long it takes them to turn the float from one direction to another.

This last video from Lunes Santo (4/18/2011) also shows the encierro but this time of the Cristo de la pasión (the Christ of passion), the one Alberto was helping to carry. This encierro is quite different from the one above. The music is much more joyful and the people applaud as it enters the church. P.S. Sorry you have to cock your head to watch it.

I think that to any non-Spaniard, at least initially, this entire week is really overwhelming and just a little bizarre. The attire, the marching through the streets, the dedication with which people follow the processions; it all seemed a bit cult-like to me, and I'm religious. I can only imagine what a non-religious person might think of this.


On the other hand, I found it weird that not only religious people participate. There are plenty of people who don't go to church who decide to be penitentes or costaleros. One of my friends explained to me that although you might not be religious, one specific Virgin or Christ might be really special to you and so you choose to participate in that procession. I still don't really get it, but oh well. 

The last thing that really struck me about this was that while there are tons and tons of super religious people who follows the pasos from start to finish, there are also the people who just go to watch because they want to hang out with their friends. Tons of teenagers were wandering around in groups, laughing, making noise, and just generally disrupting what I thought was supposed to be a really solemn and serious occasion. As the younger generations are becoming less and less religious, this becomes more of a spectacle and less of a celebration of the Catholic Holy Week. 

Overall, I'd say I was intrigued by the weeks events. There is NOTHING comparable in the States it was super cool to get to experience it. While I did at one point get tired of watching the processions (they move EXTREMELY slow considering how heavy the pasos are and we stayed for hours and hours on end), looking back, I'm glad I stuck it out.

Wishing you all a HAPPY EASTER from the beautiful blue Mediterranean!

As Easter isn't too big of a deal here, my day was probably nothing like how all of y'all's were. I woke up early and went for a morning run because this past week I've been waiting til the afternoon and it's been getting INSANELY windy...like 40mph. Not fun to run in as you can imagine.

But anyway, afterwards I decided to branch out and go to my first ever Catholic mass. I headed down the street to the nearest church for the service at 11AM. It was...interesting. Aside from the fact that it was obviously very different to hear the readings, sermon, and everything in Spanish, I also had a real hard time understanding because they were using microphones and the sanctuary was really echo-ey. I told Juanmi that I would've enjoyed it much more if there had been live subtitles haha. However, the overall message was the same and I'm glad I went. I might head that way more often now that I know what mass is like and I'm not so intimidated.

Later that afternoon, after lunch, Lulu, Luis, Alberto, Patri and I went out for a spin on Luis' boat since it was such a nice day! It's not quite bikini weather here, and especially not with the wind on a boat, so we all had light jackets on, but it was nice to just get out and enjoy the sun! We just drove around, fished a little bit (no one caught anything), and then headed back in when Patri got sea sick haha.

Later, I got to Skype with my BFF Ashley and I'm about to Skype with my fam, assuming that they answer! Hope you all have a wonderful and blessed Easter! :)

After a night out and inevitably sleeping in much later than we had hoped to, Tomás, LB, Audra, Tomas' friend Eva, and I caught the train from Milan to the cute, hilly town of Bergamo. As I mentioned before, the weather wasn't great, but the scenery was. There was a big difference between Milan and Bergamo in terms of how green it was. As you can see in the picture, everything's much more spaced out and there are lots of trees and little gardens.

There wasn't a whole lot to do in Bergamo. The way the town is set up, there's an upper and a lower part of town. The upper part of town is located up on a hill and seemed to me to be like the original, "old" Bergamo. As the city expanded, I would guess that it grew to include what is now considered the lower town, which looks pretty much like a standard big European city.

As far as activities go, there wasn't much to do in Bergamo so we just took a little tram-type thing up to the upper part of town and wandered around.. I'd say the highlight was getting gelato, delicious Italian ice cream. Yes, I said that was the highlight. I am a fat kid. I got pistachio and coffee. SO good.

Once the sun went down, we started making our way down to the lower town to catch the train back to Milan. We got in relatively late, grabbed some pizza in a cheap little bar next to the train station and then took the metro back to Tomás' place to hang for the night as we were all exhausted.

The next morning we got up early, went into Milan to see some of the few parts that we had missed and the headed back to Tomas' to get our bags and head to the station. I caught the bus to the airport at 1:30 and LB and Audra caught their train to Venice at 2.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that LB and Audra are doing like a EurRail kinda trip. They started in Rome, met me in Milan, and then headed to Venice and are currently in Florence. Tomorrow they're off to Barcelona for a couple days then the last two stops will be Granada and Almería!

The ETA in Almería for LB is Wednesday night--Audra, sadly, is heading back on Tuesday after Barcelona :( --so I'm gonna be using the rest of my vacation time, Sunday and Monday, to get all my classes ready so I'll be able to do stuff when she gets here! SO excited to have her here again and to show her all the stuff we missed last year! I'm toying with the idea of renting a car and driving out to Cabo de Gata on Saturday morning if I can't find anyone with a car to bum a ride off of. While I don't want vacation to end, I'm ready for her to get here! :)

This kid is so much fun! There is seriously never a dull moment when you're with Tomás! It was soooo good to see him! He has an awesome group of Spanish friends there too that are equally awesome.

The second day of the trip we hopped on a train and headed to Bergamo, a town about an hour outside of Milan where the airport is. Though the weather was cloudy, a little chilly, and not very spring-like, there were lots of pretty flowers like these that made it look like spring. I had never seen dual-colored tulips before, but they were really pretty! 

Side note: I can't believe we're already a week into April! I counted the days and I only have 30 days of class left in Rioja. CRAZY!

Part 2 of the lesson is that you should always ask Asian people to take pictures for you because they always know what they're doing when it comes to cameras.

Just take this woman for instance. Not only does she have a badass camera, but I mean, look at that posture! Have you ever seen a better picture taking posture?? She had to have been in her sixties, but that didn't stop her from getting down low to get that angle every time she took a picture. And I mean EVERY TIME.

Tomás, Audra, LB, and I stood there for literally 10+ minutes just laughing at this lady and all of the other Asians who were equally funny. Most of them had video cameras and were just wandering around the plaza videoing the same monuments over and over and over. Those are gonna be some of the most boring home videos ever.

No matter how boring their videos are gonna turn out, we were thoroughly entertained by their strange behavior. So much so, that we dedicated a good 5 minutes to arguing about how we could get a picture of her taking a picture of us, but we eventually wussed out.

We did however, manage to snap a few shots of her and her husband around Milan as we saw them on 2 different occasions.

Her signature pose when appearing in the picture...waving to the camera.

Scoffing at this man's inferior picture taking technique.

Yes, we were SO entertained by this little asian lady that I have enough material to write an entire blog post about her. Wow.

The lesson I (re)learned in Milan (had the same problem in Manchester/Liverpool): People don't know how to take pictures! This is the only one of our group pictures that turned out. I was worried about giving my camera to someone and having them run off with it, but I should've been more worried about whether or not the picture would even turn out. I don't know if it's because people aren't used to taking pictures with an iPhone or what, but there were quite a few failures before we got a good one.

Here are some of the failed attempts...

Failed attempt 1: I'll give her some credit...this one was almost definitely an accident.

Failed attempt 2: Gettin a little shutter happy. Yes, that is the button that takes the picture. You already proved that with fail number 1. Now you should probably also realize that your finger is showing up in the picture.

Failed attempt 3: First, your finger is STILL in the picture. Second, we told you we wanted the cathedral in the background...figured it was implied that we meant the whole thing and not just the first set of doors haha.

Failed attempt 4: We gave up on photographer 1 who was obviously incompetent and moved on to a new one. This guy had the right idea but didn't alert us to the fact that you basically couldn't see our faces at all cuz of the shadow.

Finally, we found someone to take the first picture which did turn out.

Not only was seeing the spires of the cathedral impressive, but the views of Milan from up top were too! I knew Milan was big, but it looks limitless from up there. The city goes on and on and on and the people down below look like little ants. Even within the city with all the buildings, everything is much greener than I'm used to seeing in southeast Spain.

Yes Neal and Ben, the title of this post is a Home Alone 2 quote hahaha.

After seeing the inside of the cathedral, we paid the steep price of 6 euros each to climb the more than 250 steps to get to the top of the cathedral. While 6 euros did seem like a lot, I'd say it was worth the view.

The intricacy with which the stones were carved was super impressive. Every statue, gargoyle, and figure was carved and placed with such precision. And the craziest thing to imagine is that this bad boy was built hundreds of years ago without all of the heavy-lifting machinery that we have today.

The first stop of the morning was the cathedral. We headed there via the metro then walked all around the outside of it before going to check it out on the inside. Inside was enormous, as expected after seeing the impressively large facade. It was a pretty standard cathedral which according to Tomás was constructed over a period of more than 400 years.

The only thing really strange that we encountered was along the side of the cathedral in what looked to have been some sort of mini chapel or dedicatory altar. The man to whom the altar was dedicated was an old priest or bishop or something, and there was a glass case at the bottom of the altar with a robed, masked figure inside. At first it looked normal, but then I looked at the bottom of the sleeves and there were, in fact, old, dried-up, withered hands complete with rings and all. Turns out there was a real body there and thank goodness it had a mask because if the hands looked like they did I have no desire to know what the face looked like.

 

This past Saturday (3/31), I caught a bus from Almería to Murcia and another from Murcia to the Alicante airport to catch my flight to Milan! I was off to visit my roomie from last year, Tomás, who is studying abroad there and my friends Audra and LB who have come to visit me!

Flying with Ryanair (higher than usual prices since it's Semana Santa AKA Holy Week in Spain and everyone's on vacation and wants to travel), of course I arrived super late at 11:30PM since the flight was delayed a half hour. Since the airport that Ryanair uses is actually in Bergamo, a little town about an hour outside of Milan, I had to catch another bus to get downtown where Tomas, Audra, and LB were meeting me.

I got in at like 1:15 and they were nowhere to be found so I was freaking out a little bit. Then, after about 5 minutes, I heard shouts of "Ali Ali Oooooh!" I immediately recognized Tomás' signature phrase for calling me and I saw them walking up! I was so excited! They brought me a sandwich of tortilla de patatas (one of the most typical Spanish dishes) that Tomás had made for dinner and we headed to one of his friend's places. Along the way we hurriedly caught up on each other's lives while somehow managing not to get lost. Once there, we met his group of friends, hung out for a while, and then  hit the town.